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In all of the planning that's been going on in my public health work, the big worry is that this will repeat the pattern of the 1918 pandemic:
- The disease shows up in a weak form in the spring, makes some people mildly ill, kills some people who are traditionally susceptible to influenza (very young, elderly, and people with chronic disease)
- The disease mostly disappears through the summer--not entirely, but becomes much less common
- The disease shows up again in the fall in a new, much more virulent form, and has a much higher mortality rate, especially among healthy adults. See this graph, which shows how the mortality among different ages was very different from traditional influenza.
There is no guarantee that this would happen, and no guarantee that it won't peter out like the 1976 fiasco. But we see it as a better bet to risk the accusation of an overreaction than to risk not being prepared.

Well...yes and no.
There is quite a history of companies getting out of agreements like this. Most commonly, this happens through bankruptcy restructuring (see Northwest Airlines in Minnesota). But not always, such as the Seattle SuperSonics (basketball team), who are in the process of trying to sue their way out of a contract to lease an arena in Seattle.

mrogers (85392) writes "The FBI requires a warrant to install spyware on a suspect's computer, according to a new appeals court ruling. An earlier ruling had appeared to grant the FBI permission to install spyware under the weaker provisions applied to pen registers, which record the telephone numbers or IP addresses contacted by a suspect. However, yesterday's amendment made it clear that the pen register provisions only apply to equipment installed at the suspect's ISP.

The FBI recently used spyware to determine the source of a hoax bomb threat, as reported here and here."

Lisandro writes "German researchers are developing a robotic fire-fighting "beetle". The robot, called OLE, will monitor large areas of forrest, discover fire sources and immediately report and fight them. Built after the pattern of the pill millipede, OLE can roll up into a ball when danger threatens, retracting its six legs."

* * Beatles-Beatles writes "Business.com was founded by entrepreneurs Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton in 1999. The two were widely mocked for lavishing $7.5 million on a single Internet domain name — business.com — at the time. It was then the highest price paid for a domain name.

narramissic writes "In response to overwhelming user demand for Linux, Dell has posted a survey on a company blog that asks 'PC users to choose between Linux flavors such as Fedora and Ubuntu, and to pick more general choices such as notebooks versus desktops, high-end models versus value models and telephone-based support versus community-based support.' Votes will be collected through March 23, and Dell plans to use the feedback to begin selling Linux-based consumer PCs." The poll is pretty minimal. Wonder how much it will really guide Dell's choices.